From: World Literature Today | Date: June 22, 1996| Author: Pachmuss, Temira | COPYRIGHT 1996 University of Oklahoma. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Poets of Hope and Despair presents Ben Hellman's personal reading of the Russian symbolist poets' ideologies during World War I, such poets as Andrei Bely, Alexander Blok, Zinaida Hippius, Dmitri Merezhkovsky, Fyodor Sologub, and others. The book consists of three major parts: "The War: Act I (1914-1915)"; "The War: Act II (1915-1916)"; and "The War: Act III (1918-1919)." The subdivisions of these three sections, with their conspicuous political overtones, are entitled "The Burning Q...